May/June '09 I took my first trip to Italy and visited Venice, Siena, Florence and hill towns of Tuscany. Below are some watercolor sketches from that journey. If you click to enlarge the images you may detect that in two of the three watercolors I used Italian stamps and postmarks within the images. The stamps are from correspondence to my father in the '60s and '70s when he turned his vocation of travel planning into paid work at a travel agency.
Recent Posts
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photo albums
Influence of Ink, Stone and Wood
- One image from the series, "A Season of Changes" welcomes you into this album. Other images from The "Seasons" series follow. A image called "Transformations" is inserted to introduce the notion of text and image entertwined, a continuing theme in much of my work. Two sumi ink drawings in this album were created in August '05 with the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on my mind. A common characteristic of all the images in this album are the shared influence of Japanese art on my sumi ink drawings, watercolors and woodcuts. NOTE: The link at the top left of each photo album page will take you back to the weblog where you can select another photo album or another post.
Japan: Journey 2006
- These photos give a few glimpses of my 2006 visit to Japan. My visit to an artist's studio in Kyoto where indigo dying was taking place was one highlight of this journey.
Skylit Space
- Many visitors to my studio know the barn behind my house with its weather beaten brown shingles, mural of flying birds, and a stretch of scruffy grass, between house and barn. Since 2002 a second work space at the top of our house has been added. This space is the "Skylit Space" where watercolor, cut paper and other new work emerges. The rugged barn is not forsaken. It too is being updated with snug windows and new barn-red siding. Woodcuts, stencil paintings, etchings emerge from the barn aided by a large French American Tool press that is its centerpiece. NOTE: To leave this album and return to the weblog, click on the link in the grey bar at the top any photo album page. Once back at the weblog you can chose another "Album" or another "Post"
Studio Restored
- During the summers '06-'07 David Rubin lovingly restored this old barn. It was beautiful as a shingled structure but David has prolonged its life, given it a new sheen and made it weather tight so that my stored art work is safe.
September 07, 2009
Summerkeys
I am one among the several cellists in this cello choir rehearsing by the sea, or as our coach referred to us, "the eastern most cello choir of Lubec Maine" This place is visually and musically splendid and it didn't hurt that we had an entire week of sunny, breezy weather. Bach's G major unaccompanied Suite was featured at our concerts and several of us played parts of it. I started things off with the Prelude. Our teacher, Peter Lewy from NYC played the 6th Suite at the midweek concert. It will be awhile before any of us reach toward that complex composition. What does all this have to do with prints and watercolors? A great deal actually but hard to put into words. Some of my future images will explore the connections.
August 12, 2009
May 08, 2009
May '09: Anticipation
I'll be traveling to Venice and Tuscany with watercolors. Here are a few recent images that anticipate my state of wonder but not yet the landscape to be discovered. (click on detail to see the whole image)
April 02, 2009
Enclosing a Wish
April 2, 2009 A friend gave me a box of chocolates and the shape of the box became a template for a series of containers with printed surfaces. Here is one I made on April 2nd. Click to see whole image.
February 22, 2009
kimono cloth inspires new work
Tomie Nagano, a gifted and generous Japanese friend who makes quilts out of antique kimono fabrics, gave me a gift of some fabric related to her own craft. She knows my art work and thought that the fabric might excite my imagination and be used in ways that I use cut paper: to create narrative images. Below: two examples of experiments with these beautiful fabric. (click image to see full view)
January 26, 2009
Storms of all kinds
"Artists and designers explore 'storms' of all kinds, those in nature, those that rage between cultures or among individuals as well as the internal storms of the mind" says the announcement for an exhibit at Work: Ann Arbor Michigan. The exhibit which includes my art work, "You cannot fold a flood", a watercolor inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem, will be on view February 6- March 8 '09. (click image to view)
December 26, 2008
Work in Progress 2009
Narrative images created with watercolor and cut paper are central to my work in progress. My recent art work appears on the cover of a 2008 poetry collection, "A Sea of Voices," and within a journal devoted to public health. (See recent posts for" Sea of Voices" book cover and for the Public Health Journal, Fall '08). In this post, the image is one of several I recently contributed to The Art Connection, an organization which enables clients and staff at homeless shelters and mental health facilities to chose art work for their sites. The title of the watercolor below is "Protection and Vulnerability"
October 13, 2008
Birds and Sky
I photographed this painting out doors. You may detect that it is resting on the grass to dry on a brilliant fall day. I hope it is evocative of the season. (click on the image to enlarge)
September 21, 2008
Art and Public Health Care Policy
I'm pleased to call attention to the long life of my "Sticks and Stones" poster, originally created in the 70's and still in wide circulation. It is included in the Journal of Public Health Policy Volume 29, #3 2008
September 04, 2008
Sounds of the City
(click image to enlarge)
Detail from "Sounds of the City," a floor cloth, (stencil design on canvas), created for Thelma in Brooklyn, NY. I'm experimenting with abstract shapes as narrative elements in paintings and illustrations.
